Consumer is King » Consumer Court

Bank fined for losing the property papers of a consumer, decision by National Consumer Forum

ashish — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 11:43:19 +0000

When you take a loan from a bank or a financial institution for the purpose of a house or a loan, the bank or institution would want to ensure that its ownership is retained till you pay off the loan fully. So, if you have taken a car loan, the RC papers says that the bank actually owns the vehicle, and once you are done with the loan, the bank will give you papers that will allow you to claim the registration back in your name. However, in the case of a loan for property, the bank may want to retain the original papers in its control until the loan is paid. In the case of these papers, these are official Government papers that are difficult to get a new copy made if they get lost for some reason. So what happens when you give these papers to the bank or financial institution and they lose these papers, and then deny that they ever had these papers ? Well, you better be sure that you have a receipt from the bank that they kept these papers, and then go to the consumer court to get back your rights (link to article):

The callousness of a nationalised bank in preserving the sale deed of a flat has cost the bank Rs 25,000. In a landmark order, the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) directed Bank of Baroda to pay the amount to a Navi Mumbai resident for misplacing the original sale deed of his apartment. Janardhan B Kotian had given the sale deed of his Vashi apartment to Bank of Baroda while procuring the housing loan. “Being an employee of Bank of Baroda, I had applied for a housing loan from my bank itself to buy a Cidco plot. The bank agreed to give housing loan of Rs 2.35 lakh and I raised a loan of Rs 85,000 from HDFC Bank,” Kotian said.
“In November 2000, I wanted to sell the flat. I approached the bank and paid the entire loan amount with interest. I requested the bank to return the original sale deed but the bank said it was not traceable,” Kotian said. He said that though the bank said that they would give an NoC to CIDCO to go ahead with the sale transaction, he did not accept this as the prospective buyer was not inclined to purchase the flat. “I had to refund the advance of Rs 2.5 lakh I had taken from the prospective purchaser and even forced to take some money from a financier at 2% interest to pay him back the amount,” Kotian said.

In this case, what makes it even worse was that the person worked at the same bank; so consider what happened in those cases where the person was just a regular customer of the bank.

Paying compensation to a person after getting dead insects in a cake

ashish — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 11:47:45 +0000

Food and drinks are something that a person takes inside their body, and their is an expectation that anything you consume will be free of any adulteration, or any foreign substance that can cause harm. Makers of food and beverages can face penalties if it gets proven that their items contain any substance that can cause harm. So what happens when a person buys a cake to enjoy the pleasure, and then finds that the cake contains something that can alarm any human being, dead insects. If it were to happen to you, what would you do ? You would be shocked, you would complain to the manufacturer of the item about the adulteration, and want compensation. And if the food item was something that children were to consume such as cakes, the anger would turn much more vehement and sharper. Further, if the manufacturer of the item refused to accept the complaint and claimed that you were committing fraud, what would you do ? You would go through the process of getting the item tested independently, and also file a complaint in a consumer forum (link to article):

Irked on seeing dead insects in a cake purchased by him, forced a DSP-rank official of Punjab to knock on the door’s of the consumer forum. In his complaint, Singal, a resident of Rupnagar, stated that he purchased a fruit cake worth Rs 40 along with other food items on September 18, 2009.
He alleged that he found a dead insect inside the cake and following this, a day later, he lodged a complaint at Sector 36 police station as well as with director, health services, UT. Singal also deposited the cake for laboratory examination and it was sent to the public analyst, Punjab, from where it was reported that the contents of the sample contained five dead insects and hence, it was adulterated. Alleging deficiency in service, Singal filed a complaint under the Consumer Protection Act.

The above example is a fine way of demonstrating the correct way of filing a complaint, and getting the required scientific evidence to back up your complaint.

Consumer court fines SBI Cards in a case filed by a customer and awards damages to the customer

ashish — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:39:39 +0000

There are numerous stories of consumers in India in their interactions with credit card companies. Some of the complaints that people have deal with credit card companies giving them cards without their asking for such cards, there are cases where people have been charged for services (such as insurance schemes, or others) that they have not requested for and have to fight to get removed, or when there is a transaction made on the card that the customer has not made. In many of such cases, action by consumer forums or the banking regulator have checked the practices by these agencies, but there continue to be a number of cases that make their way to consumer forums or to courts.
In another case of this kind, a complaint was made against SBI Cards, stated that the card company released a card different from the one that he had applied for, and then even many months after this when he had not yet received a card from the company, the complainant was asked to pay a fee (which is pretty absurd). And then the card company accepted that the card request was correct, but then sent him a sum of money that he had not requested. Finally, since there seemed to be no respite, a complaint was lodged in the consumer forum and then SBI Cards refused to attend the hearing. Finally, the consumer court delivered a judgment against SBI Cards (link to article):

The complainant alleged that the defendants cancelled the demand letter and informed him that his request for SBI international card was admitted when he clarified to them that he had applied for SBI card only. But again no card was sent to him. SBI Cards on July 11, 2006 sent him an account payee cheque for Rs 10,000 of SBI, Gurgaon issued in his name and directed to deposit the same in a new SBI card number.
SBI Cards did not appear in the forum despite the service of notice. The presiding officers heard the complaint ex-parte and decided in favour of the petitioner, Rajesh Mehra after going through the documentary evidence and arguments. The judges observed that the entire proceedings were initiated by the SBI Cards, hence it was liable to pay the damages.

Family members of victims of medical negligence get compensation of Rs. 5 lakh

ashish — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:17:34 +0000

When people go to hospitals for treatment, they suffer from 2 major problems:
- They do not know what exactly the problem they have, and have to depend on the doctor for explaining to them what the problem is
- When undergoing surgery or other treatment, they are leaving their lives in the hands of the doctor and have no way to figure out whether things have gone right or not. It could be that that the doctor is very busy, or something may go wrong in the setup in the operation theatre, or the anesthetic used was not administered properly; in all such cases, they have to depend on the doctor and his team.
In the past, it used to be that in most of the cases, everything went fine, but in some of the cases where the result was not so good, the treatment was faulty in a smaller percentage of such cases (in some cases, the operation not turning out successful was something that could not be avoided, but in other cases, there were certain specific avoidable reasons that led to the operation not being successful). The patient and relatives had no way of figuring out whether something went right or not, or if they were being told the truth.
Nowadays, things are becoming easier for patients – they can get second opinions from other doctors about the advisability of medical treatments, and are also able to ensure that they can ask for compensation in cases where they feel that they have been wronged; consider this case (link to article):

The Delhi Consumer Commission has upheld a lower forum order, directing a city-based hospital and its doctor to pay Rs five lakh compensation to the family of a victim of medical negligence. The commission noted that the neck movement and blood pressure of the patient was found to be normal before the operation but developed complications soon after the surgery.
The appellants contended that the family members were told about the risk associated with the operation and there were no negligence on their part as she died due to cardiac arrest. The commission said that from the medical tests of the deceased before the operation, it was clear that the patient was not suffering from any heart-related disease.